Greatest Hits radio host Ken Bruce has come under fire from Taylor Swift fans after he announced he would stop playing her songs to his 3.8 million weekly listeners until she stopped writing songs about her ex.
The veteran broadcaster – who announced in January 2023 that he would be leaving BBC Radio 2 after more than three decades – recently went public with why he won’t be playing Swift’s songs on his ‘PopMaster Quiz’ show, as he criticised the pop superstar’s songwriting in a recent interview with the Mail on Sunday.
“All of her songs are the same. I’ll play her on my radio when she writes something that’s not about her ex. Great songs on the radio have three bars, and then they go straight into the song, not these long intros like she does,” Bruce shared in an interview originally published in June.
“We are a radio show from the 70s, 80s and 90s because our main audience is older people,” he continued.
The radio icon has received backlash from the Swifties community online for her comments, which some have deemed “misogynistic”.
“Let’s just leave it to an old white man who is completely backward… shocking,” one social media user commented.
Another fan asked, “Why is an old man who knows nothing about music a radio host?”[?]”
A third user took Bruce’s comments to his new radio station, writing: “@greatesthitsuk really disappointed to read this. Saying something so misogynistic in public is unacceptable.
Despite refusing to play her entire repertoire, Bruce occasionally plays snippets of Swift’s music on his radio show to maintain diversity in musical genres.
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“For the audience, we do music from the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s. We do music from the early 2000s and 2010s — not a lot — but we want people to know things from recent and current music, but only the biggest names,” Bruce told the channel.
Bruce recently won three awards — best radio personality, best radio show and best daytime show — at the TRIC (Television and Radio Industry Club) Awards in June.
After his win, he appeared to mock BBC Radio 2, telling The Sun that “it’s an honour to actually come forward and have people speak up and say, you know, you did well”.
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